Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity 9780691219622

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Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity

Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity Alison Weber

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON,

NEW JERSEY

Copyright © 1990 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Weber, Alison, 1947Teresa of Avila and the rhetoric of femininity / Alison Weber. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Teresa, of Avila, Saint, 1515-1582—Rhetoric. 2. Femininity (Psychology) I. Title. BX4700.T4W45 1990 282\092—dc20 89-39764 ISBN 0-691-06812-7 ISBN 0-691-02744-7 (pbk.) This book has been composed in Linotron Palatino Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America by Princeton Academic Press Second printing, and first paperback printing, 1996 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To my mother, and in memory of my father and brother

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

A Note on Editions and Translations

xi

Introduction

3

CHAPTER

I

Little Women: Counter-Reformation Misogyny CHAPTER

II

The Book of Her Life and the Rhetoric of Humility CHAPTER

17 42

III

The Way of Perfection and the Rhetoric of Irony

77

IV The Interior Castle and the Rhetoric of Obfuscation

98

CHAPTER

CHAPTER

v

The Book of Foundations and the Rhetoric of Authority

123

CONCLUSION

The Golden Pen

158

Bibliography

167

Index

179

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ONE DAY shortly after I had received word that the manuscript for this book had been accepted for publication, I overheard my two sons' musings from the back seat of the car. How long had their mother been working on this book? "She started it many, many, years ago/' the elder said authoritatively to his younger brother, "when you were only a baby." They were silent a moment, in solemn contemplation of a project that has spanned nearly their lifetimes. I confess this book has had a long gestation period. During these years (I will not divulge how many), I have been sustained by my family, friends, and colleagues. My sincere thanks are due, first of all, to those who read early chapters and encouraged my first tentative efforts at understanding Teresa's bewildering rhetoric: Antonio Carreno, Georgia Greene, Gustavo Pellon, Elias Rivers, and Charlotte Stern. Regina Harrison has been an inexhaustible source of wisdom, practical advice, and good humor. Chapters II and III are revised and expanded versions of articles that appeared in the Journal of Hispanic Philology. I

would like to thank the editor, Daniel Eisenberg, not only for permission to reprint material from these essays but also for his early support of my work, valuable bibliographic leads, and stimulating telephone conversations. I am also grateful for a grant from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia that freed me from teaching responsibilities for a semester. I am particularly indebted to my colleagues Javier Herrero and David Gies, who read the completed manuscript and shared their experience, insight, and erudition with me. From the day I arrived at the University of Virginia they have been unfailingly generous with their support and encouragement. As chairmen they have created in the

X

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese the ideal academic environment for the generation and exchange of ideas. For their guidance, their confidence in me, and their consummate collegiality I am most profoundly grateful. And to my husband, Michael, and my sons, Aaron and Joel, for their loving patience these "many, many years" my inexpressible thanks.

A NOTE ON EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

to Teresa's works in Spanish are from the 1962 edition of Efren de la Madre de Dios and Otger Steggink, abbreviated as Obras 1962, unless otherwise noted. I have used the translations of Kieran Kavanaugh and ALL CITATIONS

Otilio Rodriguez for The Book of Her Life and The Interior

Castle. Elsewhere I have relied on the translations of E. Allison Peers. In order to highlight a particular stylistic feature or word choice I have occasionally substituted my own translations. I have indicated minor variations or clarifications of the published translations with brackets. All translations for secondary works are my own, unless otherwise noted.

Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity

INTRODUCTION

evening in 1614 Spanish "galleons" and fiery "serpents" burst into flame in the skies above Madrid. Tolling church bells contributed to the din of the exploding fireworks as the entire city celebrated the beatification of Teresa de Jesus, the nun from Avila. Grandees, noblemen, ambassadors, and the king himself attended a mass in her honor. In the cathedral the nun's image was depicted with thousands of silk flowers: in one hand she held the palm leaf representing her virginity, in her other hand a golden pen that symbolized her eloquence. Poets vied with each other writing sonnets in a literary joust presided over by the popular playwright Lope de Vega. Similar celebrations with fireworks, bonfires, plays, bullfights, and processions continued for days in the towns where Teresa was revered as the saintly reformer of the Carmelite order.1 This jubilant outpouring of public veneration might at first appear to be a predictable reaction to papal recognition of a national religious figure. Amazingly, this first step toward Teresa's canonization took place only thirtyfive years after she had been the object of examination by the Inquisition and only seventeen years after theologians had recommended that all her writings be burned. Teresa had lived constantly under the shadow of the Inquisition and had maintained beliefs for which some of her contemporaries had been persecuted. During her lifetime the papal nuncio had described her as a "restless gadabout, a O N AN OCTOBER

1

These festivities are described in Fray Diego de San Jose, Compendio

de las solenes fiestas que en toda Espana se hicieron en la Beatificacidn de N. B. M. Teresa de Jestis Fundadora de la Reformacidn de Descalzos y Descalzas

de N. S. de Carmen (Madrid: Viuda de Alonso Martin, 1615). A copy of this rare book can be found in the library of the Hispanic Society of New York.

4

INTRODUCTION

disobedient and contumacious woman, who invented wicked doctrines and called them devotion, . . . and taught others, against the commands of St. Paul, who had forbidden women to teach/' 2 How can we account for her survival, let alone her transformation in such a short period of time, from a controversial figure of questionable orthodoxy into a candidate for national sainthood? Charles Henry Lea, the noted historian of the Inquisition, remarked: "But for the accident that Philip II became interested in her, she would probably have come down to us as one of the beatas revelanderas [prophetic holy women] whom it was the special mission of the Inquisition to suppress/' 3 More recent historians have also expressed the opinion that it was not the orthodoxy of Teresa's ideas but the force of her personality and her influence among powerful nobles that permitted her to survive.4 Though Teresa's following in aristocratic circles was undoubtedly useful, noble or royal patronage alone would have been insufficient to save her had she failed to convince the theologians who examined her in person and through her writings.5 By all historical ac2 Reforma de los Descalzos, vol. 1, bk. 4, ch. 30, cited in The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus, trans. E. Allison Peers, 3 vols. (London: Sheed and Ward, 1944^1946), 3: 150, n. 2. 3 Lea, History of the Inquisition of Spain (1906-1907; reprint ed., New

York: American Scholar, 1966), 4: 17. 4 Enrique Llamas-Martinez writes, "It was not her innocence which saved her. Fray Luis de Leon was also innocent and he spent several years in Inquisitorial jails" ('Teresa de Jesus y los alumbrados," in Congreso internacional Teresiano 4r-7 octubre, 1982, ed. Teofanes Egido Martinez

et al. [Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1983], 1:137-167; quotation pp. 138-139). Teresa's noble supporters included Dona Luisa de la Cerda, daughter of the Duke of Medinaceli, the Marquise of Villena, the Duchess of Escalona, and Bishop Alvaro Hurtado de Mendoza, who was also a nobleman. She corresponded with the king, his confessor, secretaries, and advisors. Also see Arsenio Rey Tejerina, 'Teresa de Jesus y su carnet de ortodoxia segun su Epistolario," in Santa Teresa y la literatura mistica

hispdnica, ed. Manuel Criado de Val et al. (Madrid: EDI-6, 1984), pp. 109115. 5 The visionary nun Magdalena de la Cruz was so highly venerated in

INTRODUCTION

5

counts Teresa was a captivating individual who was able to win over even hardened adversaries with her great charm, humor, and humility. But her personal powers were matched by her persuasiveness in writing. In the uncertain theological climate of the late sixteenth century Teresa defended herself, as her earliest iconographers had envisioned, not only with the palm branch of her personal virtues but also with the golden pen of her rhetoric. But did her writing reflect conscious rhetorical devices, or was it a sincere projection of her personality? Much traditional Teresian criticism has emphasized her antirhetorical, subjective spontaneity.6 Teresa's writing does indeed impress one as spontaneous, since its syntax appears much closer to the oral than the written norm. There are sentence fragments, as well as frequent interjections, asides, and digressions. Lexically, there is also much to suggest oral language, such as diminutives, superlatives, and low-register, colloquial turns of phrase. Her spelling— naide for nadie and milaglo for milagro—implies a conformity to oral pronunciation rather than the written norms. We must consider as well Teresa's explicit disavowal of any literary pretensions: "habra de ir como saliere, sin concierto" 'it must stand as it comes out, without harmony.'7 aristocratic circles that the daughters of important families joined her convent. When Philip II was born, her habit was brought to the Court, and the infant prince was wrapped in it "to protect him from the attacks of the devil" (Jesus Imirizaldu, ed., Monjas y Beatas Embaucadoras [Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1977], pp. 37-38). Nevertheless, between 1544 and 1546 she was arrested, tried, and imprisoned by the Inquisition for "diabolical possession." Maria de la Visitacion, a Portuguese nun who had blessed the ships of the Invincible Armada at Philip's behest, met a similar fate at the hands of the Inquisition in 1588 (ibid., pp. 123-126). 6 Juan Marichal, while rejecting the thesis of oral transcription, nonetheless insisted on the antirhetorical sincerity of Teresa's writing. See "Santa Teresa en el ensayismo hispanico," in La voluntad de estilo, by Juan Marichal (1957; reprint ed., Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1971), pp. 8998. 7 Camino de perfeccidn (Escorial codex), in Obras completas, edition manual, ed. Efren de la Madre de Dios and Otger Steggink (Madrid: Catolica,

6

INTRODUCTION

She frequently protested that, because of her ill health and economic worries, she did not have time to revise or even reread what she had written. According to her followers, she wrote "as fast as a scribe/' often in a trancelike state with "her face inflamed/'8 All of the above certainly support the celebrated phrase of Ramon Menendez Pidal, "Teresa habla por escrito" Teresa speaks in writing/ 9 But Teresa's writing is also paradoxically deliberate. She herself had advocated "plain speaking" for the nuns of her order: Tambien mirar en la manera del hablar, que vaya con simplicidad y llaneza y relision, que lleve mas estilo de ermitarios y gente retirada que no ir tomando vocablos de novedades y melindres—creo los llaman—que se usan en el mundo, que siempre hay novedades. Preciense mas de groseras que de curiosas en estos casos. (Visita de descalzas, p . 634)

Let them also be careful in the way they speak. Let it be with simplicity, straightforwardness, and devotion. Let them use the style of hermits and people who have chosen a secluded life. They should not use the new-fangled words and affectations—I think that is what they call them—that are popular in worldly circles, where there are always new fashions. They should take more pride in being coarse than fastidious in these matters. (Method for the Visitation of Convents, my translation)

Menendez Pidal accordingly believed that Teresa at times deliberately adopted a "hermit's style," and noting such "rustic" lexical items as "ilesia" and "re\isi6n" for "iglesia" 1962), ch. 30, p. 239; my translation. All other Spanish citations to Teresa's works in this chapter follow this edition. 8 Procesos de beatificacidn y canonizacidn de Santa Teresa de Jestis, ed. Silverio de Santa Teresa, vols. 18-20 of Biblioteca mistica carmelitana (Burgos: Tipografia de "El Monte Carmelo/' 1934-1935), 20: xxxviii. 9 Menendez Pidal, "El estilo de Santa Teresa/7 in La lengua de Cristdbal Coldn y otros estudios sobre el siglo XVI, 4th ed. (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1958), pp. 119-142; quotation p. 125.

INTRODUCTION

7

and "religx6n" he argued, "In cases such as these, deviating from correct forms undoubtedly was more difficult for her than following them; it was an act of ascetic mortification/' 10 E. Allison Peers, Teresa's dedicated English translator, defended the paradigm of an essentially oral style and unconscious artistry but found himself caught up in paradoxes similar to Pidal's. Peers insisted that Teresa was rarely either consciously or unconsciously literary: her syntax was "less that of the professional writer than of the good talker," she had "few artifices" but "many habits not usually found in literature." Her sharp rhetorical questions were a "lifelike reproduction of the inflections of her voice." But when his analysis of "habits" turned up such rhetorical figures as alliteration, antithesis, catalogue, or etymological repetition, Peers dismissed them as basically nonliterary or inadvertent. For Peers style was an expression of sincerity: "In studying her style, therefore, we shall be studying herself, and it is that, above all, which makes the task worthwhile."11 Many critics, like Peers, have adhered to an adaptation of Montaigne's dictum: "the style is the [wojman." The corollary assumption is that Teresa's style is derived from a gender-determined predisposition to certain linguistic characteristics. Spontaneity and colloquialness have thus been subsumed under the rubric of "feminine affectivity." A typical example is Rafael Lapesa's assertion that "Teresa uses the precise, loving diminutive to tinge her entire thought with the most delicious femininity."12 This tendency to define Teresa in terms of a feminine mystique almost constitutes a critical school in itself; attributions of feminine charm are standard fare in literary his10

Ibid., p. 24. Peers, "Saint Teresa's Style: A Tentative Appraisal/ 7 in Saint Teresa of Jesus and Other Essays and Addresses (London: Faber and Faber, 1953), pp. 81-135; quotations pp. 103, 113, and 82. 12 Lapesa, Historia de la lengua espanola, 9th ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1984), p. 318. 11

8

INTRODUCTION

tories. Rodolphe Hoornaert writes that 'Teresa is a woman first of all in form, in her somewhat precipitous sentence structure which tries to say everything at once. . . . Nervous, with an extremely mobile and lively imagination, . . . her poor words succumb under the weight she makes them bear. . . . Teresa is also a woman in the very structure of her ideas. She bases her thinking less on abstraction than on the juxtaposition of concrete ideas/' 13 And Dominique Deneuville frames her scholarly compilation of Teresa's references to the sexes with affirmations of Teresa's "coquetry," "feminine demands," "feminine shrewdness," "tact," "maternal instincts," and "woman's heart."14 The discovery of Teresa's Jewish ancestry in the 1940s led to an alternative approach to understanding her style. Teresa's paternal grandfather was a convert who, like many others, had reverted to Jewish practices. In 1485 the Tribunal of the Inquisition offered a pardon to all those who confessed their secret judaizing. That year Juan Sanchez de Cepeda, his wife, and his sons (including Alonso, who would be Teresa's father) were "reconciled" to the Church in an auto da fe that required them to process barefoot through the streets of Toledo wearing the infamous yellow sambenitos. Afterwards the sambenitos, inscribed with the disgraced families' names, were hung in the parish churches.15 But how was this crucial information, which had been obscured by Teresa's early hagiographers, to be interpreted? The historiography of Americo Castro had laid the 13

Hoornaert, Sainte The'rese, icrivain, son milieu, ses facultis, son oeuvre

(Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1922), pp. 152-153. 14 Deneuville, Santa Teresa de Jestis y la mujer, trans. Fernando Gutierrez (Barcelona: Herder, 1966), pp. 45 and 135-146. In a similar vein see Mauricio Martin del Blanco, Santa Teresa de Jesus: Mujer de ayer para el hombre

de hoy (Bilbao: Mensajero, 1975). 15 Narciso Alonso Cortes, "Pleitos de los Cepedas," Boletin de la Real Academia Espanola 25 (1946): 85-110; Homero Sens, "Nueva genealogia de Santa Teresa/' Nueva revista de filologia hispdnica 10 (1956): 365-384.

INTRODUCTION

9

groundwork, showing sixteenth-century Spain to be a society obsessed with "purity of blood/7 The conversos, or Christian descendants of Sephardic Jews, even those who had taken religious orders, faced intense racial prejudice and blatant persecution by "Old Christians." Since any kind of intellectual pursuit was associated with the converso caste, might not the "ascetic" debasement in Teresa's style have been an attempt to align herself with the "Old Christian" peasant class? This was the thesis Felicidad Bernabeu proposed in 1963. However, when Castro himself reedited an earlier essay on Teresa, he rejected Bernabeu's thesis and argued that Teresa's debased style was an expression of her alienation from the educated theologians rather than an imitation of illiterate peasants: "She uses rusticisms not out of affection for peasants, (insufferable because of their Old Christian presumptions), but rather in order not to conform to what was considered proper by the 'false authorities' who had created an anti-Christian social order."16 Castro saw Teresa's racial caste as a crucial but unconscious determinant of her style—and her mysticism: alienated from a world of racial obsessions and patent injustice, converso mystics like Teresa, Saint John of Avila, and Saint John of the Cross found refuge in exploring their own individuality. By rejecting false worldly authority and affirming their intimacy with God, they thus compensated for their lack of a socially esteemed lineage. In spite of his new insights into Teresa's precarious social position Castro continued to adhere to the theory of stylistic spontaneity and to see Teresa's mysticism and her style bound up with an innate feminine affectivity: "Teresa, a very feminine soul, transposed her desire into thought, and her thought always sweeps along with it, 16 Castro, Teresa la Santa y otros ensayos (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1972), p. 81, n. 9; Felicidad Bernabeu Barrachina, "Aspectos vulgares del estilo teresiano y sus posibles razones/' Revista de espiritualidad 22 (1963): 359-375. The popular classes were notoriously anti-Semitic, much more so than the aristocracy.

10

INTRODUCTION

like a delightful gift, her emotion and fantasy/'17 Although he professed to offer an alternative to early Freudians, who had diagnosed Teresa as a hysteric, Castro merely bowdlerized the diagnosis, presenting Teresa's literary gifts as sublimations of a blocked—but nonerotic—female emotionalism.18 In a highly influential 1968 essay Francisco Marquez Villanueva gave a more complex picture of Teresa's "conflictive" historical circumstances, as both a conversa and a woman, without resorting to condescending sexual stereotypes. Marquez Villanueva was the first to suggest a consciously subversive element in Teresa's writing, necessitated by the prejudices against conversos and obstacles she faced as a women writing about mystical phenomena at a time when the Counter-Reformation Church viewed such phenomena with great suspicion.19 The idea of Teresa as a skilled writer who adapted her style to conflictive circumstances was developed extensively in a book by Victor Garcia de la Concha that ap,peared in 1978.20 He conceded that Teresa was not always a careful writer but insisted that she was, nonetheless, a talented rhetorician. The colloquial quality of her writing, he argued, reflects not an actual spoken norm but rather the influence of contemporary oral sermons and the new "colloquialness" in written language advocated by humanists like Juan de Valdes. Using the term rhetoric both in the traditional sense of a codified system of tropes and also as a strategy of persuasion, de la Concha emphasized 17

Castro, Teresa la Santa, pp. 65-66. Paul Julian Smith observes: "The way in which male critics can both denigrate and idealize female writing is very evident [in Castro's critique]/' See "Writing Women in Golden Age Spain: Saint Teresa and Maria de Zayas," MLN 102 (1987): 22O-240; quotation p. 228. 19 Marquez Villanueva, "Santa Teresa y el linaje," in Espiritualidad y literatura en el siglo XVI (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1968), pp. 141-205. 20 de la Concha, El arte literario de Santa Teresa (Barcelona: Ariel, 1978). For a concise summary of criticism on Teresa's style see Emilio Orozco Diaz, Expresi6n, comunicacidn y estilo en la obra de Santa Teresa (Granada: Diputacion provincial de Granada, 1987), pp. 29-47. 18

INTRODUCTION

11

Teresa's considerable skill in adapting her style to her addressees, especially when they were uneducated women. Her desire to share her experiences with other nuns required her to develop a "poetics for women" that was precise and persuasive but that avoided a standard theological vocabulary or pedagogical terminology. De la Concha has written, with intentional ambiguity, of Teresa's "rhetoric for women," that is, her need to find a language appropriate for women writers and accessible to women readers. The title of my book reflects my debt to de la Concha's considerable achievement: most criticism after de la Concha has recognized that Teresa's style cannot be isolated from the pragmatics of writing as a woman in Counter-Reformation Spain. When I first read Teresa's autobiography, I was struck by the profusion of self-depreciatory remarks—confessions of wretchedness and incompetence that seemed hyperbolic, even for the text of a canonized saint. I was forced to confront directly the paradox of rhetoric and sincerity. Did Teresa really believe she was "the most wretched person on earth," or was she simply utilizing long-standing humility topics? Or was self-depreciation the only self-referential language available for women? As I read more and understood more clearly the conditions under which Teresa wrote, I was convinced that Teresa's self-depreciation was rhetorical but that it had a very nontraditional function. It seemed possible that Teresa's "rhetoric for women" was a "rhetoric of femininity," that is, a strategy which exploited certain stereotypes about women's character and language. Rather than "writing like a woman," perhaps Teresa wrote as she believed women were perceived to speak. In exploring this hypothesis I found intriguing parallels between my own questions and those posed by recent studies on language and gender in contemporary society. In the 1970s a number of sociolinguists attempted to challenge stereotypes about women's speech—for example, the notion that it is more emotional or less abstract than

12

INTRODUCTION

men's. Their goal was to describe sex markers, or verifiable syntactical, lexical, and phonological differences between men's and women's language.21 However, the original "genderlect" model hypothesized a much greater degree of homogeneity in the language of each sex than turned out to be the case. Many of the specific features posited were not supported by subsequent empirical research. Gender alone appears to account for very few discrete differences in language use. Many observed differences were in fact the result of coincidental correlations between sex and other social variables, such as age, discourse role, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity.22 As Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson have stated: Except for some paralinguistic features and some rare instances of linguistic features categorically reserved for one sex or the other, the linguistic markers of sex derive from one of two sources. . . . Either they are markers indicating the hierarchical relationship between the sexes, and so only indirectly markers of sex per se (and directly markers of deference or power), or they stem from the different social networks or activities in which members of the two sexes are involved in some societies.23 Research in the "second decade" has consequently centered on discourse interaction that allows gender to be 21 Robin Lakoff's enormously influential 1973 article "Language and Women's Place" posited a discrete "woman's language" (reprinted in Language and Women's Place [New York: Harper and Row, 1975]). Cheris Kramerae introduced the term "genderlect" in "Women's Speech: Separate But Unequal?" in Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance, ed. Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House, 1975), pp. 43-56. 22 Philip M. Smith, "Sex Markers in Speech," in Social Markers in Speech, ed. Klaus R. Scherer and Howard Giles (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1979), pp. 109-146. 23 Brown and Levinson, "Social Structure, Group and Interaction," in Social Markers in Speech, ed. Klaus R. Sherer and Howard Giles (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1979), pp. 291-341; quotation p. 328.

INTRODUCTION

13

studied as a codeterminate rather than a discrete variable.24 Thus, although it had set out to challenge the unreflective biological determinism of sex stereotypes, the genderlect model was deterministic in its own right. Some theorists argued that the dominance of male language had left women as a "muted" group, unable to express their vision of reality or doomed to distorting their perceptions by adopting a "foreign" male language.25 Alternative theories have conceded much more autonomy to native speakers of a language. Howard Giles, for example, has proposed that people have considerable ability to accommodate their speech styles to different addressees, accentuating or minimizing their membership in a similar or contrasting social group. A shift toward the perceived speech style of the addressee is known as attenuation; a shift away from the receiver's style (emphasizing contrasting group membership) is called accentuation.26 For example, a black teenager might shift his style toward standard American English when applying for a job with a middle-class white adult but use more black English features when speaking among 24 See Barrie Thorne, "Opening a Second Decade of Research/' in Language, Gender and Society, ed. Barrie Thorne, Cheris Kramerae, and Nancy Henly (Newbury, Mass.: Rowley, 1983), pp. 7-24. 25 The "muted" group theory is articulated by Shirley Ardener, "Introduction," and Edwin Ardener, "The 'Problem' Revisited," in Perceiving Women, ed. Shirley Ardener (New York: Wiley Press, 1975), pp. vii-xxiii and 19-27. For a critique of the theory see Deborah Cameron, Feminism and Linguistic Theory (London: Macmillan, 1985), p. 108. 26 Howard Giles and Peter Powesland, Speech Style and Social Evaluation, European Monographs in Social Psychology, no. 7 (London: Academic Press, 1975); Howard Giles, Richard Bourhis, and Donald Taylor, "Toward a Theory of Language in Ethnic Group Relations," in Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations, ed. Howard Giles, European Monographs in Social Psychology, no. 13 (London: Academic Press, 1977); Howard Giles, Klaus Scherer, and Donald Taylor, "Speech Markers in Social Interaction," in Social Markers in Speech, ed. Klaus R. Sherer and Howard Giles (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1979), pp. 343-381. In this last article the authors use the term "level two speech markers" instead of "speech styles."

14

INTRODUCTION

his peers. Similarly, a woman might be motivated, under varying conditions, to exaggerate or tone down features that mark her as a member of the social group "women."27 The social determinism of the genderlect model has also yielded to a study of speech strategies. The emphasis for this framework is on speakers as rational, goal-oriented beings, motivated by a desire for freedom of action yet constrained by the need to protect "face," their publicly presented self-image. Plans of action are devised in order to accommodate conflicts between individual autonomy and social obligations, strategies in which the social distance of the participants and their relative power in society are crucial factors. As Cheris Kramerae has written, "Women, like men, will act to seek personal gains. But since women do not have the same status or the same resources as men, women will often use different means in order to have an influence on their own and others' lives." The strategy model therefore proposes that gender differences in linguistic behavior are best studied "as indications of and responses to a differential distribution of power."28 Although based on the analysis of spoken rather than written language, the strategy model is well-suited for application to Teresa's writing. Teresa did not write for an invisible public; she wrote for specific men and women, most of whom she knew well. The solitary act of writing was inevitably an expression of social relationships, frequently ones with a problematical distribution of power. Similarly, the "speech styles" concept has proved to be a useful framework for studying Teresa's approach to male 27 Kramerae discusses the possibility of extending the "speech styles'' model to gender studies in Women and Men Speaking (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House, 1981), pp. 90-108. 28 Ibid., pp. 118-125 and 142-154; quotations pp. 120, 153. Kramerae, the most forceful proponent of the strategy model, acknowledges the contribution of anthropological linguists Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, "Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena/' in

Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction, ed. Esther Goody

(Cambridge: At the University Press, 1978).

INTRODUCTION

15

versus female readers and for analyzing the recurrence of such "feminine" features as diminutives, self-depreciation, and self-irony. This model has therefore led me to propose that what some of Teresa's admirers have described as her irrepressible feminine "charm" or "coquetry" might be better understood as covert strategies of empowerment. My approach, therefore, has been to foreground gender as a stylistic determinant, without denying its correlation with other social variables. Teresa's style is seen as a pattern of linguistic choice motivated by deliberate strategies and constrained by social roles. I have found that by exploiting features from the low-register, private discourse of subordinate groups in general, and women in particular, she created a discourse that was at once public and private, didactic and affiliative, authoritative and familiar. Strategy may imply to some readers not so much a "plan of action" as a conscious manipulation of others. I do not wish to suggest the image of a Machiavellian Teresa but rather someone closer to an Aristotelian eiron. In the Ethics Aristotle places the alazon or hypocrite on one side of the truth-telling mean and on the opposite side the eiron or character who disavows all admirable qualities. If, like the hypocrite, the eiron intends to deceive his audience, he does so "not for gain but to avoid parade."29 This is an extraordinarily apt description of Teresa. In Chapter I, I describe the historical circumstances that made it imperative for Teresa to "avoid parade" by affirming her membership in the social group of "mujercillas"—or "little women." Chapters II through IV concentrate on specific manifestations of this strategy—humility, irony, obfuscation—in the context of individual works. Although much of this book is devoted to explaining Teresa's deliberate strategy, I have also been led to speculate on why Teresa wrote so prodigiously and so obses29

The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (London: Oxford University Press, 1925), pp. 1127b, 31-32.

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INTRODUCTION

sively. It is not necessary to be a Freudian to recognize that unacknowledged motives may be concealed behind our conscious goals; that we betray unresolved conflicts when we speak or write; that the resolution we seek in the written word may be incomplete. I argue in Chapter II that the command to defend herself placed Teresa in a double bind because it was impossible for her to obey authority without challenging it. But the conflict between obedience to authority and authenticity played out on the larger social stage can also be seen as a reification of conflicts in a more intimate sphere—the double bind of the adolescent passage. Chapter V returns to the concept of the double bind; The Book of Foundations bespeaks Teresa's "unfinished business/' her continuing struggle to reconcile her love for and resistance to authority. Paul Hernadi has proposed, with elegant simplicity, three axioms of critical understanding: "Writers communicate, texts conceal, and readings disclose."301 hope that by disclosing Teresa's rhetoric we can better understand not only the story Teresa wanted to communicate but the story her texts conceal. Her rhetoric of femininity was selfconscious, alternatively defensive and affiliative, and above all subversive; it allowed her to break the Pauline silence. But her success also led to a self-subversion, for through her insistent writing she found the means to silence voices she did not want to hear. 30

Hernadi, "Criticism as Re-presentation, Evaluation and Communication/' in What is Criticism? ed. Paul Hernadi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), pp. ix-xvi; quotation p. xiv.

Chapter I

LITTLE WOMEN: COUNTER-REFORMATION MISOGYNY

"A VIRILE WOMAN/' "a manly soul/' "She endured all conflicts with manly courage."1 These are some of the most reiterated encomiastic expressions to appear in the documents related to Teresa's beatification and canonization. Teresa as a "virile woman" was the central conceit in many of the poems produced for contests in her honor: "You well deserve this name, because your deeds are not those of woman but of glorious man. . . . A Sage said (since it seemed impossible) that to find a strong woman, one must search to the ends of the world. Therefore it is appropriate that you were found among us, oh rare and divine miracle, since Spain was always thought to be at the end of the world."2 When Teresa was proclaimed copatron saint of Spain, a Carmelite friar declared in a celebratory sermon that she had succeeded in transcending the congenital inferiority of her sex altogether: "This woman ceased to be a woman, restoring herself to the vir1

Procesos de beatificacidn y canonizaci6n de Santa Teresa de Jestis, ed. Silverio de Santa Teresa, vols. 18-20 of Biblioteca mistica carmelitana (Burgos: Tipografia de "El Monte Carmelo," 1934-1935), 20: xiii, xxii, xlii. Many other examples could be cited. 2 Diego de San Jose, Compendio de las solenes fiestas que en toda Espana se hicieron en la Beatificacidn de N. B. M. Teresa de Jestis Fundadora de la Reformacidn de Descalzos y Descalzos de N. S. de Carmen (Madrid: Viuda de Alonso Martin, 1615), llv-12v. With almost identical phrases a Dominican preacher wrote: "If Solomon sought a strong, courageous and virtuous woman in his age, and could not find a single one, blessed is our age which has seen one of the most courageous and virile women that the Church has ever had" (cited in Felix G. Olmedo, "Santa Teresa de Jesus y los predicadores del siglo de oro," Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia 84 [1924]: 165-175 and 280-295; quotation p. 170).

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ile state to her greater glory than if she had been a man from the beginning, for she rectified nature's error with her virtue, transforming herself through virtue into the bone [i.e., Adam's rib] from which she sprang."3 A 1614 text describes a hieroglyph depicting Teresa with walls in the middle of her body and towers growing out of her breasts. The accompanying Latin inscription reads: "Ego murus et ubera mea sicut turris" 'I am a wall and my breasts are like towers/ Saints Elijah and Elisha float above her on a cloud, proclaiming "Soror nostra parvula, ubera non habet" 'Our little sister does not have breasts.'4 It is understandable that a misogynist society would need to engage in this kind of linguistic (and pictorial) gender reassignment in order to designate a woman as virtuous. (The etymological correlation between virtue and masculinity needs no elaboration.) But it is remarkable that Teresa should have been the object of this transformation, since she had so often during her lifetime endured and embraced the derogatory epithet of mujercilla or "little woman." WOMEN AND PAULINE SILENCE

Teresa was considered a mujercilla because, among other things, she "taught others, against the commands of St. Paul."5 That is, she engaged in theological discourse at a 3 Fray Francisco de Jesus, in Relacidn sencilla y fiel de las Fiestas que el rey D. Felipe IIII nuestro Senor hizo . . . (Facticio volume: Vatican Library, 1627), cited in Francis Cerdan, "Santa Teresa en Los sermones del patronato (1627)/' in Santa Teresa y la literatura mistica hispdnica, ed. Manuel Criado

de Val (Madrid: EDI-6, 1984), pp. 601-608; quotation p. 606. Also see Francisco Lopez Estrada, "Cohetes para Teresa: La relacion de 1627 sobre las Fiestas de Madrid par el Patronato de Espana de Santa Teresa de Jesus y la polemica sobre el mismo," in Congreso internacional Teresiano 4-7 oc-

tubre, 1982, ed. Teofanes Egido Martinez et al. (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1983), 2: 637-681, esp. 654-655. 4 Diego de San Jose, Compendio, 73r. 5 This was the pronouncement of Papal Nuncio Felipe Sega. See Introduction, pp. 3-4.

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19

time when this was a proscribed activity for women. Paul's justification for the exclusion of women from an apostolic role bears repeating: "Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church" (1 Cor. 14:34-37). The position against women is even more restricted in the pastoral Epistles, written near the end of the first century A.D.: "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1 Tim. 2:11-14). The early Church fathers believed that women's intellectual inferiority and sensuality make them especially susceptible to deception by false prophets: "For [false prophets] are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. 3:6-7).6 John Gerson's (d. 1429) words are representative of a particularly rigid interpretation of these biblical passages: The female sex is forbidden on apostolic authority to teach in public, that is either by word or by writing. . . . All women's teaching, particularly formal teaching by word and writing, is to be held suspect unless it has been diligently examined, and much more fully than men's. The reason is clear: common law—and not any kind of common law, but that which comes from on high—forbids them. And why? Be6

For the historical background on women in early Church history see Constance F. Parvey, "The Theology and Leadership of Women in the New Testament/' in Religion and Sexism, ed. Rosemary Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), pp. 117-149. Parvey notes that the later pastoral Epistles reflect a heightened concern over the influence of Gnostic teachers and ecstatic sects among women (p. 136).

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cause they are easily seduced and determined seducers; and because it is not proved that they are witnesses to divine grace.7

The belief in feminine spiritual inadequacy is perhaps best summarized in Kramer and Sprenger's 1486 handbook on witchcraft, Malleus Malleficarum. According to the fantastic etymology proposed by these authors, femina is derived from fe minus—lacking in faith. Nevertheless, at various times in Church history women have been permitted to express their religious experience in writing. Thomistic theology, while essentially androcentric, did concede the possibility of a prophetic role for women.8 The explosion of female piety in the late medieval Church is recorded in the visions of women mystics such as Julian of Norwich, Mechtild of Magdeburg, and Catherine of Siena. Such literature was not only a socially sanctioned activity for women;9 as Caroline Bynum has argued, women's visionary writings propagated new forms of late medieval Christian piety and created a religious language inspired by uniquely female experiences.10 MULIERCULAE AND THE PRE-REFORMATION

At the beginning of the sixteenth century Christian humanists began to reject explicitly the idea of the spiritual 7

De examinatione doctrinam, pt. 1, cited in Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, eds., Book of Showings by Julian of Norwich, 2 vols. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), 1: 151. 8 Eleanor Commo McLaughlin, "Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes: Women in Medieval Theology/7 in Religion and Sexism, ed. Rosemary Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), pp. 213-266; quotation p. 236. 9 "Visions were a socially sanctioned activity that freed a woman from conventional female roles by identifying her as a genuine religious figure. They brought her to the attention of others, giving her a public language she could use to teach and learn" (Elizabeth Petroff, Medieval Women's Visionary Literature [New York: Oxford, 1986], p. 6). 10 Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

COUNTER-REFORMATION MISOGYNY

21

inferiority of women and to advocate expanded religious education for them. In the Paraclesis or Exhortation to Diligent Study of Scripture (1516), Erasmus exhorted all Christians—including women—to study the "philosophy of Christ/' declaring that specialized learning was not necessary to approach the Scriptures: "But this delectable doctrine doth apply herself equally to all men submitting herself unto us while we are children tempering her tune after our capacity, feeding us with milk. She refuseth no age, no kind, [whether man or woman] no fortune no state and consideration."11 Jesus did not want his teachings to remain secret but to be widespread, Erasmus argued. Accordingly, the Scriptures should be translated into the vernacular to make them accessible to all: "I would desire all women [mulierculae] should read the gospels and Paul's Espistles, and I would to God they were translated into the tongues of all men." Erasmus' defense of the rights of women to study the Scriptures is reflected in his vindication of the diminutive mulierculae: in the Exhortation mulier-

culae are not Pauline "silly women" but simple, unlettered women. This movement of evangelical democratization, transcending gender and class barriers, flourished in early sixteenth-century Spain during the ascendancy of Cardinal Ximenez Cisneros. Under his tutelage portions of the Scriptures and numerous devotional and mystical works were translated into Spanish and distributed to convents and monasteries. The accessibility of works of St. Catherine of Siena, Saint Claire, Saint Juana de Orvieto, Gerson, and St. John Climaco in the vernacular meant that many 11

For Erasmus' Latin text I have used the edition by Werner Welzig in vol. 3 of Ausgewahlte Schriften (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968). I have modernized the spelling of the anonymous English translation of 1529 (facsimile reprint, Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1973). Damaso Alonso has edited and reprinted the 1555 Spanish translation of La Pardclesis o exhortaci6n al estudio de las letras divinas along

with the Enchiridion (Madrid: Centro Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1971).

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more women were inspired to participate in the wave of renewed evangelism. Furthermore, the cardinal, a former confessor to Queen Isabel, was an enthusiastic supporter of female piety. Many of his monastic reforms were directed specifically toward improving the religious life of nuns and women tertiaries. During the years of his ascendancy women were granted a greater role in the educational and administrative life of convents. He was, to the dismay of some of his biographers, a devotee and defender of women visionaries who flourished as a result of his reforms. THE ALUMBRADAS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF REACTION

Although Cisneros had opened up the Church to women and laity, the later years of his reformation witnessed another religious phenomenon that was to have a profoundly negative impact on women's relationship to the Church in general and on the life of Teresa de Jesus in particular. Groups of men and women, laity and religious, began to meet in private homes to read and comment on the Scriptures. Although the groups did not share a unified doctrine, they held the common belief that the individual was capable of understanding the Scripture when inspired or "illumined'' by the Holy Spirit. This is the assumed origin of the derogatory appellation alumbrados or Illuminists. There are two distinguishing sociological features of Spanish Illuminism. First of all, many of its adherents were conversos. The direct influence from Jewish theology is not at issue; rather, as neophyte Christians, subjected to ever increasing racial discrimination, they may have been especially attracted to a nonceremonial form of Christianity centered on a loving and forgiving God.12 A second so12 See Angela Selke, "El iluminismo de los conversos y la Inquisition. Cristianismo interior de los alumbrados: Resentimiento y sublimation/'

in La Inquisicidn espanola: Nueva visidn, nuevos horizontes ed. Joaqufn Perez

Villanueva (Madrid: Siglo veintiuno, 1980), pp. 617-636. For speculation on why conversos were attracted to heterodox movements also see Anto-

COUNTER-REFORMATION MISOGYNY

23

ciological anomaly is that women held major leadership roles in these circles. Isabel de la Cruz was recognized as the "true mother and teacher" of the Toledo alumbrados; Maria de Cazalla preached the Gospel to women in her home in Guadalajara; and Francisca Hernandez exercised enormous influence over Franciscan preachers in Valladolid. It is difficult to determine why women should have played such dominant roles in Spanish IUuminism. We can only speculate that the translation of the Scriptures into the vernacular, together with the general receptivity of the Cisneros period to an anti-scholastic Christianity, afforded women domestic evangelical roles for which they could find precedent in the history of the primitive Church. As Marcel Bataillon has shown, this movement of interior Christianity initially arose independently from Protestantism, although it sprang from common European roots of spiritual unrest. Later it easily incorporated analogous Erasmian ideas, which began to penetrate Spain with Erasmus' vernacular translations in the early 1520s. But a confluence of events—the death of Cisneros in 1517 and the beginnings of Luther's rebellion in the same year, the growing suspicion of Erasmian anticlericalism, and the intensification of anti-converso racism—moved the Inquisition to repress what it could only define as a native protestantism in the making.13 In 1525 the Inquisition published an edict against the alumbrados, an attempt at codification of their doctrine based on the trials of its main teachers. As far as can be deternio Dominguez Ortiz, Los Judeoconversos en Espana y America (Madrid: Istmo, 1971), pp. 159-160. 13 The best introduction to the spiritual history of sixteenth-century Spain is Marcel Bataillon's authoritative Erasmo y Espana, trans. Antonio Alatorre, 2d rev. ed. (1966; reprint ed., Mexico: Fondo de cultura economica, 1982). His thesis that Spanish IUuminism reveals common roots with but little direct influence from Lutheranism has not been seriously challenged since first formulated in 1937. Antonio Marquez, Los alumbrados: Origenes y filosofia, 1525-1559, 2d rev. ed. (Madrid: Taurus, 1980), gives the best overview of the early alumbrado movement and reproduces the 1525 Edict and summaries of the trial of Alcaraz.

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mined from the edict, the alumbrados' heresy was one of protestantism sensu latu: they denied the necessity of any sacramental intermediary between God and man and thus rejected the efficacy of external works as well as the authority of the Church to interpret Scripture.14 What the doctrine of dejamiento meant to the alumbrados is still not entirely clear. The term appears to refer to a direct experience of God, achieved through a form of mental prayer that emptied the mind of thoughts. In the state of dejamiento the advanced adepts could surrender themselves to God's will, with the assurance that they would not be led into sin. The Inquisition considered two equally heretical implications: justification by faith alone and impeccability or the belief that once united with God a person could not sin. The 1525 Edict did not identify Illuminism as an orgiastic sect, but their supposed doctine of impeccability, together with the free association between men and women in small groups, were seen as dangers to public morality.15 In short, the fear of Protestantism nourished by anti-Semitism transformed a tiny sect of evangelicals, in the Inquisition's eyes, into a threatening band of heretics. The prominence of women in such dangerous sects provided the 14 Unlike Bataillon, who considered Illuminism to be a "movement" of interior Christianity akin to Erasmism, Antonio Marquez insists that the Toledo alumbrados constituted a native, heretical protestant sect, with justification sola fe and sola scriptura as basic doctrine (Los alumbrados, pp. 219-221). 15 Isabel de la Cruz and Alcaraz were never accused of sexual impropriety. However, Francisca Hernandez' relationships with her male cohorts were condemned as licentious. Charges of illicit erotic relationships between beatas and their confessors did figure prominently in Inquisitorial trials in Extremadura in the 1570s. The Inquisition considered this movement Illuminist, although there is no evidence of direct link between the Toledo Illuminists of the 1520s and this later manifestation, which was essentially thaumaturgical rather than evangelical. On the Extremadura Illuminists see Bernardino Llorca, La Inquisicidn espanola y los alumbrados (1509-1667) (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia, 1980), and Al-

varo Huerga, Historia de los alumbrados (1570-1630), Vol. 1, Los alumbrados

de Extremadura (Madrid: Fundacion universitaria espanola, 1978).

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25

justification for reaffirming traditional ecclesiastical misogyny. The Counter-Reformation's increased skepticism toward female spirituality and its eagerness to reinforce male hierarchical authority is broadly reflected in the decline in the percentage of female saints from 27.7 percent in the fifteenth century to 18.1 percent in the sixteenth.16 However, the rapidity in the change of climate can also be appreciated by comparing the fates of women religious figures during the Cisneros period and its immediate aftermath. The enthusiastic sanction of a female ecstatic in the first decade of the century contrasts sharply with the persecution of the alumbradas only fourteen years later. The life of Maria de Santo Domingo, the Beata or Holy Woman of Piedrahita, in many ways exemplifies the favored role of women ecstatics during the Cisneros period. Born of peasant stock in I486, Maria never learned to read or write. Around 1507 she began to acquire a reputation for saintliness because of her mortifications, trances, and gift of prophecy. Although she was a tertiary or lay sister, she became so influential in the Dominican order that she was entrusted with reforming the convents and monasteries in the area around Toledo. Her raptures at court won her the support of the Duke of Alba, who endowed a convent for her. Cisneros was one of her devoted admirers— he even gave her a rope belt of St. Francis and solicited her prayers. In 1508, at the height of her fame, the Pope sent his own envoys to investigate the authenticity of her reported visions and ecstasies. Fortunately she could count on the active support of Cardinal Cisneros, who considered her the embodiment of "living Christian doctrine/'17 After two 16

Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000-1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 220-221, 225. 17 Cited by Vicente Beltran de Heredia, Historia de la reforma de la provincia de Espana (1450-1550) (Rome: Institutum Historicum FF. Praedicatorum, 1939), p. 82.

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years of investigation the papal envoys not only declared her innocent of wrongdoing but also issued an edict proclaiming the miraculous nature of her raptures, visions, extended fasts, stigmata, and prophecies.18 One of the marvels adduced in the 1510 Edict was Maria's ability to answer profound questions on theology and the Scriptures while she was in a trance: "Those who have seen and heard her agree that it is indeed marvelous that a poor ignorant woman [mujercilla ignorante] like Sor Maria, born and raised in a village should be able to answer such questions as well as and sometimes even better than any master of Theology or man of science."19 One witness quoted the opinion of a professor of theology at the University of Valladolid: "He could not help but weep greatly upon hearing the marvelous answers that Sor Maria gave to his questions; and he told me, because we were very close, that he did not know why men bothered to learn anything other than to serve God, since that little woman [mujercilla], who had been instructed by the Holy Spirit, knew more than all the learned men of the Realm."20 Here the diminutive mujercilla has the same positive connotation we saw in Erasmus' Exhortation: in the eyes of Cisneros and his followers a woman's humble ignorance was no obstacle to spiritual knowledge—ignorance could even give a woman the moral advantage.21 18

For the history of Sor Maria, see ibid, and Llorca, Inquisicidn, pp. 3764. He reproduces the edict in her defense in App. I, pp. 259-271. 19 Llorca, Inquisicidn, p. 260. 20 Beltran de Heredia, Historia de la reforma, p. 107. 21 After Cisneros7 death Maria's activities were severely restricted. Although other political factors were undoubtedly involved in the controversy surrounding this woman, her "vindication" in the 1510 Proceedings indicates the extent to which Cisneros was willing to expand and defend the apostolic role granted to women. For further evidence of Cisneros' support of women visionaries see Ronald E. Surtz, "La madre Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534) y la cuestion de la autoridad religiosa femenina," Nueva revista de filologia hispdnica 33 (1984): 483-491. William A. Christian, Jr., notes that after Cisneros' death in 1517 the Inquisiton and the papacy began to examine cases of lay visionaries much more rig-

COUNTER-REFORMATION MISOGYNY

27

This willingness to concede interpretive and even vatic powers to an unlettered woman would be inconceivable just fourteen years later. In the 1524 trials against the Toledo alumbrados the Inquisition pronounced such apostolic activity by women "atrevimieto"—an act of effrontery. The woman leader of this group, Isabel de la Cruz, was accused of numerous breaches of magisterial authority: she read and taught the Scriptures "according to her own opinion" and encouraged others to do likewise with "simplicity of spirit"; she was said to believe that learned men were incapable of surrendering their will to the love of God.22 According to several witnesses, "She wanted to teach and not be taught, and she contradicted what learned men said."23 Her disciple, Alcaraz, gave her more authority to interpret the Bible "than Saint Peter and all the other saints."24 Her role as principal teacher of the sect earned her the epithet of "mujercilla ignorante y soberbia" 'ignorant, proud, little woman/ 25 After five years of imprisonment she was induced to confess "that she lacked humility since she was certain that she could not be deceived and hence came all her effrontery in speaking of the Holy Scripture and teaching it to others, . . . and she confesses that she was in error in committing this act of effrontery, since she was an unlearned woman."26 In a 1529 auto da fe Isabel and Alcaraz, their property confiscated, were sentenced to public penance, lashes, and life imprisonment. The language used to describe feminine theological preorously (Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981], pp. 150-151). 22 Marquez, Los alumbrados, pp. 261, 262, 164. 23 Ibid., pp. 280-281. 24 Ibid., p. 101. 25 Ibid. 26 J. E. Longhurst, "La Beata Isabel de la Cruz ante la Inquisicion, 15241529," Cuadernos de historia de Espana 25-26 (1957): 279-303, quotation p. 285. Also see J. C. Nieto, 'The Heretical Alumbrados Dexados: Isabel de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz/7 Revue de literature comparie 52 (1978): 293-313.

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sumption is even stronger in the trial records of Maria de Cazalla, a conversa and follower of Erasmus, who was denounced to the Inquisition in 1532. One anonymous witness after another testified that she had gone to Maria's house and heard her read the Epistles in Spanish and that Maria, while "in the kitchen/' had tried to teach things about God "in a way which was not good for women to talk/'27 In the opinion of one prosecutor, "This prisoner holds many arrogant, fatuous, scandalous and suspect propositions, assuming the office of preacher and teacher of doctrine which is conceded only to wise men who have taken Holy orders/' 28 The proceedings include such accusations as Said Maria de Cazalla, teacher and dogmatizer of said alumbrados, preached to them in public and indoctrinated them, quoting for this purpose sacred authorities and psalms from the Holy Scriptures and declaring this to them in the vernacular, twisting the meaning of the Holy Scriptures and its doctors to her own evil and harmful end, and many persons went to hear her and they listened to her as a preacher, which was scandalous for the people, since she cannot and should not preach, being a woman, and even if she were a man, it would be contrary to apostolic right and precept.

Although she acknowledged she was guilty of presumption for speaking about doctrine, she denied that she intended to teach or held heretical doctrine.29 After two years of imprisonment she was tortured but made no further confessions. Her sentence was moderate for one accused of heresy—a fine of one hundred gold ducats and public penance in the parish church.30 27 Milagros Ortega-Costa, ed., Proceso de la Inquisicidn contra Maria de Cazalla (Madrid: Fundacion universitaria espanola, 1978), pp. 259-260. 28 Ibid., p. 32. 29 Ibid., pp. 100, 132. 30 As Bataillon makes clear, Maria was persecuted for her admitted Erasmian beliefs, redefined by the Inquisition as Lutheranism, at a time when Erasmus' thought had not yet been officially condemned by the

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29

T H E CONSOLIDATION OF COUNTER-REFORMATION MISOGYNY

In opposition to the charismatic evangelical freedom championed by Cisneros, and enthusiastically embraced by the alumbrados, the Inquisition was moving, in essence, to consolidate the power of a hierarchical mystery religion hermetically controlled by priests. In order to do so it was necessary to ensure that sacred texts were inaccessible to the laity in general but to women in particular, who were deemed to be mentally incapable of understanding the texts and inherently susceptible to diabolical influence. The struggle to regain control over the Scriptures and Christian doctrine, and the effort to exclude women from all but ceremonial forms of Christianity, is most dramatically illustrated by the trial of Carranza, Bishop of Toledo, and the censure of his Commentaries on the Christian Catechism.

Bartolome Carranza de Mendoza at first would appear to have impeccable orthodox credentials. He was twice the Spanish representative at the Council of Trent in 1545 and 1551 and was a prelate favored by Philip II, having distinguished himself in his service during the Catholic Reformation in England. In 1558 Carranza published a Christian catechism in Antwerp that, in many respects, is a prototypical Counter-Reformation treatise. From his preface, "To the pious reader/' we can see that his motivation was to produce a book of Christian doctrine that would correct the errors being disseminated by the Lutheran heresy. On the issue of scriptural translation, which had been left unresolved at Trent, his position is cautious: he acknowledges that before Luther the Scriptures were not prohibited in the vernacular. In fact, in Spain Bibles were Church (Erasmo, pp. 209-211, 470-475). The reaction against women's charismatic leadership is reflected in Francisco de Osuna's 1527 work, Third Spiritual Alphabet, in which he warns his Franciscan brothers to consult the superiors for spiritual advice rather than "mujercillas devotas" who may be deceived (Tercer abecedario espiritual, ed. Melquiades Andres [Madrid: Catolica, 1972], p. 567).

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translated at the order of the Catholic kings. But, he argues, this practice has become dangerous now that Lutherans have taught simple unlettered people to understand the Bible according to individual whim. In Spain the situation has become such that women are declaring the meaning of the Scriptures to men, against the commandment of Saint Paul. The Scriptures are like wine: they are not for the young and inexperienced, but they can be imbibed profitably if they are "watered down" with glosses and commentaries. The compromise Carranza proposes is that parts of the Scriptures, those that contain advice, precepts, and examples of good behavior, can be read by everyone, men and women. Other parts of the New Testament that are relatively clear can be read provided the translations are not literal and are accompanied by marginal comments. The most obscure passages, like strong wine, must be kept from the laity. But there are some good and devout people, he adds, who are capable of reading even the most difficult portions of the Bible as well and better than those who know Latin and other languages. I don't say this because the sciences that God has communicated to men do not have their place in the Scriptures, but because the Holy Spirit has His disciples and illumines them [los alumbra] and gives them help. . . . I have experience of this and can certify that with my advice some people have read the Holy Scriptures and this has helped them live a better life. These included some women, for neither Paula nor Julia Eustoquium, noble Roman women at whose request Saint Jerome translated the Scriptures . . . were more worthy of reading them.

In future, more serene days, Carranza concludes hopefully, the Church will once again be able to distribute freely the "spiritual nourishment" of the Scripture.31 31 Carranza, "Al pio letor [sic] de este libro," in Comentarios sobre el Catechismo christiano, ed. Jos